In support of Katie Nimon

Sunday, 26 July 2026

Matthew Hooton is editor-in-chief of The Post and Sunday Star-Times.

OPINION: Napier MP Katie Nimon hasn’t done anything wrong. I even hesitated before choosing Stuart Nash’s sacking - sorry, resignation - as a NZ First candidate as a theme for today’s editorial. I worried that even mentioning Nimon could risk making the first-term National backbencher and working mum a villain in the minds of a small minority of readers.

Nimon, who is 35, is unusually well qualified for an MP in today’s era. She holds an executive MBA as well as an undergraduate degree in design. Her experience before becoming an MP includes working in her family’s transport company in the Hawke’s Bay and an Auckland advertising business, and in local government back home.

Loyal to her party, she endured the humiliation of a solid 5856-vote defeat by Nash, then the incumbent Labour MP, when she first stood for Napier in 2020. But Nimon got back up again and turned that into a 8870-vote victory in 2023.

Married in 2022, she gave birth to the couple’s first child in 2025 and took 10-weeks paid maternity leave. This was exaggerated by Nash to 10 months in his now politically fatal text message to former Attorney General Christopher Finlayson KC.

Ten weeks paid maternity leave certainly isn’t unreasonable, especially given the government-funded scheme provides for 26. In top law firms, partners can sometimes take a year on full pay. Had Nimon taken the 10 months paid leave Nash claimed - or longer - that would also have been within the rules.

Other new parents may be angered that their maternity leave isn’t as financially generous as MPs’, but that’s a separate policy issue. It’s also fair enough to make a political point that Nimon’s party and its ACT ally have not been as keen on paid parental leave as their coalition partner NZ First and their Labour, Green and Te Pāti Māori opponents.

In return, National and ACT might say that what can be afforded for 120 MPs may not be economically possible if applied across the whole workforce. They might also point out that it’s a pretty important principle of democracy that MPs’ pay is not in the hands of party leaders or whips and can only be taken away in very rare circumstances following laborious parliamentary procedures.

But none of this is relevant to Nimon who, in any case, returned to full-time duties much earlier than any rules demanded. Her colleagues say she also kept in touch with what was happening in her electorate and Wellington, especially after the first six weeks learning to breastfeed and all the other enormous challenges for a new mum.

There is no comparison between the magnitude of their two jobs but, in this, she is similar to Dame Jacinda Ardern who took six weeks maternity leave in 2018 while also receiving papers and briefings on important matters of state.

As New Zealanders, we can all be immensely proud that ours is a country where a 37-year-old woman can become prime minister, have a baby and take at least some parental leave without too much political fuss, at least from the mainstream.

Back then, Winston Peters covered as acting prime minister. To his credit, he faithfully led the Labour-Green-NZ First Government that had been formed democratically and progressed its policy agenda, rather than using those six weeks for any mischief on behalf of his own party and supporters.

In retrospect, Peters’ conduct meant it would have been possible for Dame Jacinda to have stayed on maternity leave for longer and hopefully that will be possible for prime ministers in the future.

Also encouraging in its own way is that both National and NZ First strategists are briefing furiously to try to take the credit for Nash’s fall. That suggests both parties see political advantage in standing up for Nimon in this particular case and for the principle of parental leave in general.

We have come a long way from when Ruth Richardson first became famous, not for her policy moves in the early 1990s, but simply because her wanting to breastfeed her daughter Lucy in Parliament in 1983 was then nearly as controversial as the Mother of All Budgets eight years later.

Richardson received support from most of the other seven women MPs in Parliament in 1983, and some of the men. In 2026, the parliamentary support for Nimon has been universal. That’s some good news.

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